Fall to Pieces
by Vesica
Summary: Faith had been warned he was trouble. He was gorgeous, with a predatory grace and that world-weary air only Immortals had. But until she found herself alone in the Magic Box with him that night, she hadn’t understood just how dangerous Dorian could be.


**Title:** Fall to Pieces  
**Author:** Vesica  
**Rating:** R  
**Warnings:** Sexual themes, Hetero warning (for Joe)  
**Characters/Pairing:** Faith/Dorian Gray (LXG)  
**Disclaimer:** BtVS and LXG belong to people other than me.  
**Author's Note:** Written for the First Line meme going around LJ. First line supplied by houses. She might not have supplied it if she had any inkling of what I was going to do with it.  
  
Also, I had to take a few liberties with canon to have Faith return in Season 6, not 7.

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_Softly, so softly, he traced a finger up her stomach, coming to rest between her breasts. _  
  
All along the line he had traced, she could feel her heart thumping, her skin pulsing with each beat. God, that was so wrong. To make her feel every last nerve in her body and send what little blood was left in her brain elsewhere.  
  
He had breezed into the Magic Box offering information on the latest 'demon at large', said the demon had something he wanted. Not that he would say what.  
  
Anya had all but growled at him. Seems they knew each other and not in the happy-memories way. Anya told them all to stay away from him – that Dorian Gray was an evil, manipulative, immortal little bastard. Coming from her, the was pretty damning.  
  
So she had tried. She had kept her distance, restricting herself to sneaking sidelong looks while they were all up to their eyeballs in books. He was gorgeous – surely no one could question that. But there was something about him – some sort of secretive air that kept her looking, trying to figure him out. She caught him looking at her once or twice as well. When he spoke to her, it was only to ask alarmingly penetrating questions about her or her part in all this. They were the sort of questions that came from much thought and the idea of him think of her affected her more than she cared to admit.  
  
His information had helped quite a bit – gave them what they needed to know to kill the demon and get whatever it was he was after. Yet, he still hung around. She wondered why until the night she stopped by the Magic Box only to find the rest of the gang had gone. Buffy was patrolling, Dawn was doing homework, Willow and Tara had some witchy meeting to be at, and – judging by the hastily scribbled note –Anya had dragged Xander back to their apartment for some orgasms. Which left only him – languidly perusing the book open in front of him.  
  
He looked up at the chime of the bell over the door and smiled when he saw her. It was a smile that made her feel flushed and rather scared all at the same time. She knew that smile; she DID that smile. Odd to be on the receiving end of it.  
  
"Faith, just who I was hoping to see." His voice was no louder than a purr but it paralyzed her, holding her frozen even as he brushed past her to the door, lock slipping into place with soft a click.  
  
She wasn't quite sure how it happened but somehow she found herself sprawled across the practice mats in the backroom, her hands clutching his shirtfront, his lips pressed to hers.  
  
He kissed like no one she had ever had. Tasting of the forbidden, kissing him was like slipping a lipstick into your pocket for five-finger discount, like sneaking a smoke out behind the gym, like the sweet sweaty wrongness of lying in bed, silently getting yourself off, with the drone of your parents watching the evening news coming from the other side of the wall. His touch made her remember what she had once hoped sex would be, back when all she knew of it came from well-worn romances and imagination.  
  
She was lost from that first kiss. Now, laying naked before him, everyone who had come before faded away. It didn't matter that he had taken thirty minutes to remove her clothes or that he was still mostly dressed. It didn't matter that he hadn't even really touched her yet – just traced invisible lines up her arms, drawn spirals across her stomach, interrupting his explorations to kiss her until her breath caught in her throat from the rightness of it. She was in no hurry to end this awakening but one thing troubled her. She thought she knew but couldn't stop herself from asking.  
  
She caught his hand and held it to her, stilling it. "Dorian, why did you stay?"  
  
He just smiled and pulled his hand away. His eyes never left hers as he unbuttoned his vest and slipped it off. He started down the buttons of his shirt but stopped with a thoughtful look.  
  
"No. I think you should do this."  
  
He sat down next to her and said nothing until she obediently sat up and went to work on the buttons. Seeing the deep creases marring the pristine white, she tried to smooth them out but the material clung stubbornly to the wrinkles she had caused.  
  
He laughed at that. "Don't trouble yourself about that. You asked, I believe, why I stayed?"  
  
She froze again, hands dropping uselessly to the mat as he slipped off his shirt. _Me. You stayed for me. Say it, say it._ She had never understood the nitwit, heaving-bosom heroines of those damn novels and their pathetic need to hear some bare-chested stud tell them he wanted _them_ – until now. Whatever web he was weaving, she had been caught before she ever even suspected.  
  
She must have looked like a deer caught in headlights, the way he smiled, a gentle but somehow still predatory smile, tilting her chin up to look her in the eye. "My immortality has proven to be many things, but rarely has it been interesting. You intrigue me. The others talk of your betrayal as if it happened yesterday yet you are here, among them, with them yet apart. There is a darkness in you, entangled in that incredible power to fight. They would say to fight evil but it is not a pure geas. I think…" he paused for a moment, searching for the right words, "…I think that we might get a great deal of amusement from each other." He traced lightly along her jawline before asking, "So…Shall we then?"  
  
Her mind raced. She knew his single-mindedness meant he would treat her as a treasure – for a time. She also knew that when the end came, it would be him doing the ending. Her Slayer strength and speed was useless against him. He saw her truly, saw needs and wants she hadn't know were there, and used them ruthlessly to his own ends. Saying yes would mean leaving everything she had known, most of which she didn't like but still. What did Immortals to do while away the years? He could kill her and none would be wiser. She would simply vanish. That he would tire of her soon enough was certain. This was stupid, a fool's choice. But it was also a chance to have what she had never known she wanted.  
  
Unable, for the first time in her life, to find her voice, she nodded. She couldn't even meet his eyes as she did, which annoyed her on some level. But as his arms encircled her, laying her back against the mat, she forgot to worry where this would end and at what price. Dreams she had forgotten were rekindled by the increasingly urgent kisses and heated caresses. Somehow being thoroughly ravished in the dingy backroom of a magic shop by a man that would surely betray her restored to her a sense of innocence she had lost. And that, more than all his wiles or skills, was what held her there beneath him, desperate to remember the girl she had once been.  
  
_End_


End file.
